


Raising Havoc

by Ultra



Category: Crossfire Trail (2001)
Genre: Adopted Children, Family, Family Feels, Friendship/Love, Gen, Growing Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-07-25 21:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7547896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/pseuds/Ultra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JT and Rock find an Indian baby and have to raise her themselves since Rafe & Anne already have a baby of their own.</p><p>(AU post-movie, because JT lived; originally a gift for langstonlover, based on her prompt/request)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raising Havoc

“We can’t keep her!” exclaimed J.T. even as he held the wriggling bundle in his arms.

It weren’t that the kid wasn’t cute and all, but he and Rock had no business trying to raise a child they just happened to find in the woods. It was a sad enough tale to tell, finding the body of an Indian squaw down by the stream. There was no blood, but she was long dead, Heaven only knew how. They were trying to decide what to do about it, whether leaving the girl’s body well alone was better, or taking her someplace to bury her well, maybe even take her to her people. Somewhere amongst their bickering over the issue, they heard the crying start up. Not far away, hidden by branches and a well-placed blanket, they came upon the baby girl. Now the argument had become what they were going to do with her.

“Poor little babe,” said Rock in a quiet voice. “You shoutin’ over her like a great wild animal!” he hissed at J.T.

The younger man rolled his eyes.

“Don’t make me any the less right in what I said,” he told Rock crossly, but to his credit a lot more quietly. “In the first place, she ain’t ours, not yours or mine by blood,” he explained. “Second of all, she ain’t even our people. She’s one o’ them Cherokees!”

“Only half I reckon,” said Rock thoughtfully. “Think on it. Why would the poor lass by out here alone with the babe? Her family would be with her. Husband, father, mother. Pound to a penny, she ran or was banished for treading where she shouldn’t stray,” he said with a pointed look.

J.T. glanced down at the baby girl in his arms. His holding her close and gently bouncing her in his arms seemed to have calmed her fears. She wasn’t crying anymore, just fussing a little and clutching at tiny handfuls of his shirt. Now that he looked, she didn’t look all that much like the Indian folks. Could be Rock was right, that she was a white man’s daughter. She sure was beautiful though, like her Momma, who was doubtless a real beauty in life, since she was still angelic enough after her passing.

“She don’t have anyone,” he thought aloud. “Not a person in the world,” he added more deliberately, looking up and meeting Rock’s dark eyes.

“We of all people no what that feels like,” he reminded J.T. of something he already knew very well. “Can you really let her be as we were? Floating out there in the nothingness, waiting to find a place to belong?”

J.T. knew he was right. They couldn’t do that, just couldn’t. Leaving her out here, the poor child would surely meet her mother’s fate. If they tried to take her back to the Cherokee, chances were good they wouldn’t accept her, and neither would the folks in town, given she was half-and-half. Sometimes society of all kinds was equally cruel.

“Maybe Rafe and Anne...” he began, knowing before he saw Rock shaking his head that the plan was no good.

Anne had only recently given birth to a baby son herself. Little Charlie wasn’t even six months yet. There was no way they could put the strain of another child on their friends’ relationship. J.T. knew Rock had been right all along. They were going to have to raise this little one themselves, however hard that proved to be.

“Think we can do it?” he asked seriously. “I mean, I know some about babies, from the work house and all.”

“Had baby brothers and sisters enough of me own back in the day,” Rock shrugged. “Can’t be that hard, can it?”

They both knew it could, but they were also very aware of their lack of choice in this situation. Only monsters would leave a baby to fend for herself in the world. Maybe it was fate that men like them found her and not some others that would do the wrong thing rather than the right one. 

“What do you say, little one?” Rock asked the child that was never going to answer, reaching out a finger that was easily grabbed in her tiny fist. “You think Uncle Rock and Uncle J.T. can be all that you need in this world?”

“I think maybe we could,” his friend said slowly, uncertainly. “But, she can’t just be ‘little one’, she’s gotta have a name.”

Rock thought carefully about that, removing his woollen hat and scratching his head. He didn’t know any Indian names, and it’d only draw attention if they gave the child one anyway. Of all the names in the world, it was hard to think what would be right and proper for the babe.

“What was your Ma’s name?” he asked J.T. suddenly.

“They told me it was Mary,” he admitted. “Why?”

“Mine was Siobhan,” replied Rock, as if that were explanation enough. “I think maybe it’d be right and proper to honour the both o’ them.”

“Mary-Siobhan,” said J.T. looking down at the baby in his arms that was slowly falling asleep. “Yeah, I think that’ll work,” he smiled at the sweet child.

The naming was actually the easy part, of course. Raising a child would be that much harder. Still, J.T. and Rock had already decided this must be their destiny, to raise this baby as a daughter or similar. It sure wouldn’t be hard to love her enough, they both knew that already, but a learning experience it would also surely be.

* * *

“C’mon, little one,” said Rock, on his knees by the door.

He held out his arms and encouraged the little child of barely one to walk toward him. J.T. had a hold of her hands, prising his fingers away a little at a time, so scared that Mary-Siobhan would not stand on her own. He needn’t have worried as their baby girl proved when she took a few toddling steps forward, suddenly coming to Rock at full pelt. He grabbed her up the second she reached him, getting to his feet and swinging her around proudly.

“That’s my girl!” he cried with a grin.

“Hey, that’s our girl,” J.T. corrected, but he was smiling just as wide and feeling equally as proud.

* * *

“But Uncle Rock! Uncle J.T.!” the six year old complained, stamping her foot for good measure. “I don’t wanna wear the stupid dress! I like my pants and my boots!”

It was always expected that the two men would end up raising a tomboy, and yet somehow they had hoped Anne’s influence would make a little lady out of their Mary-Siobhan. No such luck. They got her the finest of dresses for her birthday and arranged her a party in town, only for her to kick up a fuss and all but scream the place down. She loved nothing as much as learning to ride a horse and rope cattle. She wanted to be just like her beloved uncles. Somehow it was very hard to be mad at her for that.

“Y’know she looks like you when she does that,” said Rock, biting his lip so as not to laugh at J.T.’s put-out expression.

The little girl with her pout and folded arms did look like J.T. when he was being defensive about his cooking or some such. She clearly learnt the look and stance from him.

“Maybe,” he grumbled. “But the language she’s about to start using, she got that from you!”

* * *

Neither J.T. nor Rock were naturally violent men, and yet both had a hand on their guns and an evil glint in their eyes when they saw Mary-Siobhan getting attention from some young buck outside the saloon.

“I thought we told her about not talking to strangers,” said J.T. with a glare.

“’Twas when she was but a child, my friend,” he reminded his fellow ‘uncle’, slapping him across the shoulder. “Our girl is growin’ up fast,” he noted, staring across at the sixteen year old with a sigh.

She was but a babe in arms all of a minute ago, or so it seemed. Now the days of teaching her to walk and talk were long gone. She was grown, as Rafe and Anne’s children were. Time had passed Rock and J.T. by in so many ways and yet they were happy enough somehow.

“You think we should...” J.T. began to ask when the guy across the way leaned in closer to Mary-Siobhan.

He needn’t have worried, as evidenced a moment later when the girl’s fist connected squarely with the young man’s jaw and sent him sprawling. Immediately she came rushing across the street to her uncles’ side, shaking her hand out.

“I don’t think I did that right,” she confessed, frowning at her stinging digits.

Rock roared with laughter, and J.T. was joining in before long, unable to help himself.

“You did it right enough, sweetheart,” Uncle Rock told her, pointing to the man she had hit who was still trying to figure out what happened.

“That’s my girl,” said J.T. pulling Mary-Siobhan in close and kissing her forehead.

“Hey, our girl,” Rock reminded him, as all three laughed together and began walking away.

They may not be a conventional family, but they were a happy one. Destiny and fate had led them to each other, and they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.


End file.
